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Bearing witness – James Nachtwey’s searing images of war

Photojournalist James Nachtwey is considered by many to be the greatest war photographer of recent decades. He has covered conflicts and major social issues in more than 30 countries.

Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time since 1984. However, when certain stories he wanted to cover – such as Romanian orphanages and famine in Somalia – garnered no interest from magazines, he self-financed trips there.

He is known for getting up close to his subjects, or as he says, “in the same intimate space that the subjects inhabit,” and he passes that sense of closeness on to the viewer.

In putting himself in the middle of conflict, his intention is to record the truth, to document the struggles of humanity, and with this, to wake people up and stir them to action.

As Nachtwey says:

[Photography] puts a human face on issues which, from afar, can appear abstract or ideological or monumental in their global impact.